TO PAULOVSKOY. 
America l ; a Barrow in England; a Cairn in 
Wales, in Scotland, or in Ireland; or of those 
heaps which the modern Greeks and Turks call 
Tepe; or, lastly, in the more artificial shape of 
a Pyramid in Egypt; they had universally the 
same origin. They present the simplest and 
sublimest monument that any generation of 
men could raise over the bodies of their fore- 
fathers; being calculated for almost endless 
duration, and speaking a language more im- 
pressive than the most studied epitaph upon 
Parian marble. When beheld in a distant 
evening horizon, skirted by the rays of the set- 
ting sun, and, as it were, touching the clouds 
which hover over them, imagination represents 
the spirits of departed heroes as descending to 
irradiate a warrior’s grave 2 . Some of those 
mounds appeared with forms so simple, and yet 
so artificial, in a plain otherwise level, that no 
doubt whatsoever could be entertained con- 
cerning their origin. Others, more antient, 
have at last sunk into the earth, and left a 
hollow place, encircled by a kind of fosse, which 
(0 Sec the Journal of a Tour into the Territory North-west of the 
■Alleghany Mountains, by Tluiddeus Mason Harris: Boston, 1805; for 
a very curious account of the Sepulchral Mounds in America; the 
history of which is lost, as the author expresseth it, “ in the oblivion of 
ages." 
(2) See the Vignette to this Chapter. 
